Fragrance of the Past

Part memoir and part travelogue, this collection of essays evokes scenes of daily life in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The daughter of diplomats and now the wife of a diplomat, this globe-trotting scholar takes accounts of gracious households, historic monuments, and alluring Arabic towns and merges them into a larger portrait of a sophisticated culture that has produced more than its share of architects, mathematicians, poets, and prophets.